Students fuse lessons in performing and visual arts for biennial exhibit

Posted: Sunday, August 26, 2007

Musical and visual arts collided through children's eyes and spilled onto canvases and into sculptures last year. Now those creative works made by area students will be displayed for more than a month at the Lyndon House Arts Center.

"The music was our inspiration," said Mary Lazzari, who teaches art at Timothy Road Elementary and also works as a fine arts specialist for the Clarke County School District. "The work is beautiful. You're just going to be blown away when you see it."

The show is part of a Clarke County tradition of biennial art exhibits for its public school students. Every school and grade level should be represented, Lazzari said, with 150 pieces of art planned for display. Included for the second time are pieces made by Oconee County public school students.

A reception planned for Sept. 23 will further highlight the musical theme with student dance and instrumental performances. Initial plans call for different school groups to alternate every 15-20 minutes during the two-hour event.

"The music was our inspiration," Lazzari said. "We want the music as part of our reception."

The exhibit reflects how teachers have been working together to better plan and complement their lessons. The creative work they directed merges both subjects and their respective histories.

As an example, one group of students studied and mimicked Romare Bearden, a 19th-century artist and product of Jazz Era and the Harlem Renaissance.

Another group of students focused their camera lenses on downtown Athens, in order to photograph the feel of the music scene in this city including R.E.M.

Expressive points of view were also cultivated. One Whit Davis Elementary student, Lizzy Ratajczak, painted herself at ballet class. In the work, she used brush strokes "that have a lot of movement and energy to show how she feels when she's dancing," Lazzari said.Ratajczak wrote about what she created, too.

"This picture took me three hours to make," she wrote,in her artist's statement. "I worked very hard and used myself as a model. I used acrylic paints, and making the colors perfect took a lot of mixing. I tinted and shaded, and somehow, I made a beautiful work of art."

Web sources were also used to help teachers expose students to different sounds and cultural lessons, such as Native American drumbeat rhythms and rattles. Another class studied African American folk spirituals and made pictorial quilts. Rita Foretich, an art teacher at Barrow Elementary School, credited teacher instruction with helping build both the teachers' and students' knowledge and body of work.

Visual and performing arts teachers studied together last year through a federal grant awarded to Clarke County Schools in 2005. The funding is designed to help teachers learn from professional artists, educators and each other.

The goal being to create arts education standards for Clarke students through those lessons, which helped build this exhibit.

"We have a full year to work in the theme and to really create a lot of quality work that has some meaningful instruction behind it," Foretich said. "You'd be really amazed at what these kids can grasp if you give it to them and break it down."

If you go

"Artists of Note: A Visual Celebration of Music and Dance"

When: While visual art will be on display Tuesday through Nov. 3, a reception is planned from 2 to 4 p.m. Sept. 23. The program will feature students' musical and dance performances, as well. The gallery is open noon-9 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays and 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.

Where: Lyndon House Arts Center, 293 Hoyt St.

Cost: The exhibit is free and open to the public, however, children must be accompanied by adults.